Every day, it seems, The New York Times reports on the death of another American Communist, or an American Communist who saw fit to join up with the KGB as an espionage agent for Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. This time, the obituary by Sam Roberts is about Judith Coplon, who over sixty years ago was arrested by the FBI in a classic sting operation. The Bureau’s agents, having received solid data from the then secret Venona decrypts of KGB messages from Moscow Central to its American agents, fed her false data about atomic power. As they hoped, the 27-year-old Coplon, who was then working at the Justice Department as a political analyst, took off to meet her lover and handler, KGB agent Valentin A. Gubitchev, to whom she planned to hand over the materials.

The Russian and Coplon were both arrested in 1949 under the Third Avenue subway line (which no longer exists) in Manhattan, and Coplon was caught red-handed. As it turned out, America’s democratic legal system protects even those Americans who were actual Soviet agents. Coplon, although found guilty by the jury of espionage in 1949 and conspiracy with Gubitchev in 1950, had both of the convictions overturned. The FBI neglected to follow protocol; they illegally heard conversations with her lawyer, and also had arrested her on “probable cause” without a necessary warrant for her arrest.

Thus the civil liberties of the system Coplon wanted to destroy worked to protect her, even though she was totally guilty. Like Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs, Coplon went to her death proclaiming that she was not a Communist and that she was innocent. “The only crime I can be said to be guilty of,” Coplon had later said, “is that I knew a Russian.” She also said: “I will always say that I’m innocent and that I’m being framed.”

What is most amazing about her passing, however, is the defense on her behalf told to Roberts by Coplon’s daughter, Emily Socolov. Like historian Staughton Lynd, whom I noted a week ago acknowledged the Rosenbergs’ guilt but argued that the couple had a moral obligation as Communists and “citizens of the world” to spy for the Soviet Union. Socolov told the following to journalist Roberts:

The subject of her innocence or guilt was something that she would strictly not address…It’s very hair-raising to read about your mother being given a code name and moved around like a chess piece. Was she a spy? I think it’s another question that I ask: Was she part of a community that felt that they were going to bring, by their actions, an age of peace and justice and an equal share for all and the abolishing of color lines and class lines?
If these were things that she actually did, she was not defining them as espionage. If you feel that what you’re doing answers to a higher ideal, it’s not treason.

Rather than admit the obvious truth that she was guilty — a conclusion made by the U.S. Court of Appeals, which noted that “her guilt is plain,” and confirmed by the Venona releases in the past decade — Socolov justifies her acts by implying that she does not believe that her mother was a spy, but that even if she was, she was doing it to “bring an age of peace and justice and an equal share for all,” as well as the abolishing of class and color lines!

One must ask: how? By spying for Joseph Stalin, who murdered millions of his own subjects and who embarked on a vicious and murderous campaign of anti-Semitism in the final years of his life? This is the same Stalin who was waging an expansionist foreign policy that led to the decades-long Cold War with the West and was trying to create the fall of Western governments in France and Italy in order to spread the Soviet empire.

Coplon was not acting as a deluded American Communist who tried to organize labor unions and break the color bar in the South, but as an American spy for the Soviet Union. By making her argument, Socolov does not seem to realize she is actually saying that both actions are one and the same. Communists did both, and their motives are what must count, not the result of their actions.

Then Socolov says that the point is that her mother did not define this as espionage! In other words, a criminal act is not what everyone says it is if the criminal defines it differently. And remember, her motives were good — she wanted a better world! One can excuse anything that way. The Nazis believed in the racial inferiority of non-Aryans, and believed science proved that Jews were not humans but vermin. They were wrong, but they only thought in acting on those beliefs that they were doing good for humanity. (I know, I’ve committed the unpardonable sin for the Left of equating wonderful Communism with evil Nazism.)

And that final sentence of Socolov: “If you feel that what you’re doing answers to a higher ideal, it’s not treason.” The great British author Rebecca West once titled her book about Western spies for the Soviets The New Meaning of Treason. She would have seen Socolov and others as the essential Western dupes: naïve do-gooders who are willing to serve tyranny or justify those who do so by the standards they establish themselves for their apologetics.

The problem is that they were and are wrong. Their higher ideal was the liberation of the graveyard, and the society of the guillotine. Those who in this day and age have still not learned that lesson are nothing less than pathetic. They are not useful idiots — but simply idiots.

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1.
Bugs

People like this seem to have an extra-low tolerance for…what? Ugliness? Misery? Unfairness? Suffering? The “human condition?” Their inability to understand and accept the essential chaos and fallen-ness of the world often leads them to believe and act in completely irrational ways if they think their beliefs and acts will “help.” Compassion is good. Compassion taken to this extreme is bad – even if you’re not a dupe who uncritically accepts Soviet propaganda.

Another example showing that the country changes but the hatred doesn’t.

The US in 1949 could hardly have been more different than today.

I don’t think the hatred really has anything to do with the country. For one thing, the US, by any standard, is at the pinnacle of all countries that has ever existed in any era. Yet, they still hate it. It’s a near-genetic thing in some people. Either they are born with it or they get infected with it at such an early age that they can never shake it.

I guess all those Germans who thought the Nazis were the greatest thing that ever happened to Germany but “didn’t know” what was going in the concentration camps didn’t commit moral crimes either.

My advice to you is that when ever you have these kind of thoughts that you put it to the “Nazi” test and if it fails then you are in error. Whenever you support a genocidal mass murdering regime you are guilty of a moral crime.

I can accept the claim that the person was doing what he or she thought was right, out of idealistic motives. It’s still espionage and treason.

When someone commits espionage and treason against an evil regime, I would call that person a hero. I am thinking of Oleg Penkovsky, a colonel in the GRU, who worked for U.S. and British intelligence in the 1960s. Penkovsky knew exactly what he was doing. He also knew the risks. When his handlers warned him that he was under suspicion, and should get clear immediately, he refused. “My place is at the front”, he said. He continued to spy – and was caught and executed.

Heck, I’ll even give a salute to the “Red Orchestra” of German Communists who spied against the Nazis during WW II.

I’ll even concede there is difference between a misguided idealist like Coplon, and a Judas-for-cash like Aldrich Ames.

The fundamental flaw in all “higher law / higher duty” excuses for reprehensible conduct is that they’re inconstant, external, and evaluative. That is:
– They change over time,
– They recur for their justifications to external trends and forces no individual can control or predict,
– They rely completely on the offender’s evaluation of which of two imperatives is the more important.
Refuse to allow those three conditions and the problem vanishes.

A man with a fixed moral standard — a small set of coherent principles to which he’s pledged fidelity — doesn’t change his behavior over time. He doesn’t excuse himself on the grounds that unnamed others need him to break faith with what he knows to be right. And since his principles are coherent, he never has to decide between competing constraints. But that sort of unchanging, unbending personal morality — what we used to call integrity — is becoming a rare thing in today’s “whatever’s right for you” / morally relativistic milieu.

Give Coplon a break, Miss Daughter. She was in love. She was thinking not with her brain but with another part of her anatomy which, if a man did it, he would be regarded as an inferior version of Hugh Hefner who, since viagra addled his brain, is now regarded as the laughing stock of male humanity. Love and lust blind all. So, Treason? No. Its something far more common than that. Just look at the faces of all those broken-hearted French girls who had their heads shaved by the Liberated French in 1944-45. Once lust takes over, I don’t think some vague love of humanity has anything to do with it.

Love, lust, or idealism, it doesn’t matter. She still committed treason and should have been punished for it.

I have a unique perspective on this one. My grandfather was a lawyer and was asked by Paul O’Dwyer (a “Progressive” lawyer & brother of the NYC mayor) to defend her. Grandpa met with her, and declined to take her case. She was absolutely guilty, and he knew he could get her off on the technicality that ultimately prevailed, but decided that he could not in good conscience be responsible for a traitor to the United States going free. Of course, some other slimeball lawyers did represent her and she did go free. I always admired my grandfather for that decision.

Your grandfather was free to reject the case but the lawyers who represented Coplon were not slimeballs. Those were not technical violations but constitutional violations and her lawyer(s) would have been unethical not to have used them in her defense.

And, the lawyers and courts in claiming those rights and disallowing such evidence, upheld our ideals. Note that the US legal system did not say, “Well we, the government, had good intentions, so we should ignore the Consitutional protections and find you guilty…” No, the governmental institutions said, we will hold to our ideals even when it hurts us. That’s the part where liberals often fail.

Whoops. When I was schooling Coplon’s daughter about the real motivations of her mother, as with my limited knowledge I have been able to glean, I did not mean to say Coplon should not have been punished for engaging in espionage to get laid. I just meant that I never got the impression she was driven by ideology as Alger Hiss was (’til he got exposed) or Whittaker Chambers was (until he found religion). I don’t think her motivation was treason, but then whose motivation is, when mostly these idiots sell secrets for money? What was the motivation of the little twerp, now sleeping naked, who gave all those secret cables to Assange? I guess, except for Hiss, who never stood up for his ideology for all those years he was professing his innocence (unlike Julius Rosenberg, who let his wife get fried rather than give up his bosses) I guess I don’t see anyone motivated by a desire to commit treason except them, not even Benedict Arnold. It is always some other human weakness that motivates them that seems to overbear a rather undeveloped love of country which blinds them to the truth of what they are really doing (excepting of course Hiss and the Rosenbergs). It does not excuse the act or relieve the state of the need to punish them, though, to the full extent of the law.

There is a long line of Communists buried deep in our government, universities, Hollyweird, and social services. Coplon didn;t have anything on Teddy Kennedy who conspired with the Soviets against Ronald Reagan. Then there is “Red Pepper” who served in our congress. Jane Fonda, Danny Glover, and Sean Penn in Hollyweird. Oh and all those czars: Van Jones (an avowed Communist, chased out by Glenn Beck), Anita Dunn loves Mao and Mother Teresa
(was it the killing of his countrymen that endeared Moa to Dunn), Carol Browner (belonging to Socialist Group, which she “scrubbed” off her web site) or Kevin Jennings.

“The problem is that they were and are wrong. Their higher ideal was the liberation of the graveyard, and the society of the guillotine. Those who in this day and age have still not learned that lesson are nothing less than pathetic. They are not useful idiots — but simply idiots.”

I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that all of the people who man the obituary desk at the NYT look like supporting characters in a 1930′s newspaper drama directed by Frank Capra. You know, the little guys with the eyeshades and suspenders who all probably wrote for the Daily Worker in their youths. Naturally when some beloved old Commie from 50′s passes on they give them the journalistic eqivalent of an Irish wake.

It’s interesting that these socialist thinkers rarely have any fundamental life supporting skills such as growing food, building shelter, finding, extracting and delivering energy, maintaining vital water or power distribution systems, etc. They tend to be society’s leeches (in this case a government drone).

For anyone who suspects that not everyone accused of being Soviet spy was a victim of a right-wing, McCarthyite witchhunt, I recommend “Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America” by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. This book is based on the Venona project. Venona was the project to decrypt Soviet diplomatic messages from 1943 to 1980. Amazingly enough, it turns out that the government know Coplon, and others, were Soviet spies because the Soviets said that they were.

Thanks, Paul from Hamburg; there is another recent book which exposes the communist party in the U.S. through making public Moscow’s Comiterm Central files, (released in the ’90s) including the vast communication with the American Communist Party, along with FBI files made public with the FOI laws. The book is “Dupes”, by Dr. Paul Kengor. It covers the period from the Russian Revolution to 2010. Reading the chapters covering the 1940′s is like reading about the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and today. When the USSR went bankrupt, it stopped funding the CPUSA, but apparently the hatred for free market capitalism is as strong as ever. Class envy, ‘racism’ against minorities, no ‘war for big oil’, redistribute the wealth, etc., all common themes of communism, are as loudly proclaimed as ever. It worked for the brutal dictators of the Soviet Union, enabled them to kill off the land owners, the religious people, and eventually anyone who wanted any kind of freedom. What did it leave the people? Poverty. Will it happen here? Is it already happening?

Thanks for this post. The discussion of Communist sympathizers and spies takes me back to Le Carre novels. It is exactly this type of historical context which is critical to educate people upon. I never even heard of Coplon but appreciate the education.

The very last moment at which anyone could claim ignorance of the Soviet Union’s nature was August\, 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Anyone who claimed to believe that the Soviet Union was other than the brutal regime that it was chose to believe it, chose to be ignorant, chose not to know. I think calling such people “naive” is too charitable.

The only thing I sort of doubt here is the idea that this sort of excuse-making would work for any political point of view equally. It is a bit hard for me to imagine a Nazi pulling it off by saying “Hey, we really cared about a world free of the refuse of the inferior races. So give us a break.” Nor do I think conservatives today could pull this off and get away with it by defending individual liberty against excessive state control. There seems to me an important point in this, too. In the historical battle between those who stress liberty and those who stress equality, I think somehow that equality as a value has an easier time of it. Those who are for equality can argue a morality of intentions not consequences and be given a pass more easily than those who would do so in defense of liberty. Maybe it’s because liberty is more of a negative value – a defense of the right to be let alone, which means you can be greedy and mean as well as courageous and generous with your liberty. Equality is more fully positive and substantive in its self-presentation. It is always an equality of some positive thing, like income or health care, etc. So it’s easier to be heady and arrogant in its defense. What do you think?

Rebecca West explained (in The Meaning of Treason) that Americans who spied for the USSR were instructed, if caught, to always plead “not guilty.” Britons who spied for it, OTOH, were instructed to confess and plead guilty. This was due to the varying technicalities of the two justice systems.

It appears that Coplon remained true to her Communist instructions to the end.

Although the young Ms Socolov seems as deluded as her mother turned out to be, Judith Coplon looks to have been very definitely as guilty as all get out. She was caught ‘redhanded’ with a purse full of classified documents, but due to legal complications, including some illegal bugging and probable burglaries by the FBI, with their subsequent lying about it, she couldn’t be convicted. In reality, the genuine evidence was in the Venona transcripts, which were being translated at the time, but the government could not use those transcripts in open court for fear of compromising the entire Venona operation. Thus, Coplon was let go.

Not so lucky were the thousands of innocent victims of the second Red Scare, an historical development that was in reality almost entirely generated by domestic political considerations – – Republicans wanting to regain political power. People like Lauchlin Currie, whose job was to work closely with the Russians, suddenly found himself being judged by the new antiRussian standards of the late 1940s and accused of engaging in espionage, a totally ridiculous claim, although he admitted later that he may not have been ‘circumspect’ enough in his work.

The same was true of Harry Dexter White who made the mistake of allowing Stalinist sympathizers to work with him in the Treasury Department. Although putatively vetted by Hoover’s FBI, these people, the socalled Silvermaster Group, turned out to be Bolshevik spies par excellence and were among the most active Soviet agents in Washington. However, no conclusive or reliable evidence has ever surfaced indicating that White himself was spying for the USSR.

A third innocent was probably Alger Hiss, whose earlier ‘friendship’ with the covert Soviet courier Whittaker Chambers eventually involved Hiss in a mosaic of lies and fabricated evidence that ended his diplomatic career and put him in jail for four years. The fuller story of the lies, the remanufactured Woodstock typewriter, and the forged documents is available at web sites like AlgerHiss.com, run by Hiss researchers, and DocumentsTalk.com, operated by a Russian professor in Moscow.

Remanufactured Woodstock typewriter? Which supposedly created the Pumpkin Papers? Why would the FBI have had the motivation to manufacture a phony typewriter to type up the papers produced by Chambers before Hiss even identified what typewriter his wife used, and before the FBI knew that typewriter had been sold or disposed? If this manufactured typewriter did not produced the aged Pumpkin Papers, which were typed on a Woodstock, how did Chambers get them other than his story that Hiss gave them to him, an admitted Soviet courier? Hiss’s timeline never made any sense which would mean the FBI was working for Chambers at a time when everyone thought Chambers was a nut, and only Nixon of all people had faith in him, based on the bird watching incident. Even if the FBI was working for him, there were also some other incriminating documents. Why manufacture a typewriter, which made a pretty good duplication of the documents Mrs. Hiss’s typewriter produced, before they locked in Hiss as to what typewriter was used? It woudl have been difficult, but the most serious problem with Hiss’s timeline, on this after conviction defense, was that no one would have had the motivation to do it, or the foresight to see it needed to be done. As a conspiracy the theory does not hold water, if you look at Hiss’s own timeline. There is more but I forget the other stupidities with Hiss’s defense, but that alone is enough.

Anyway, the Venona intercepts proved Hiss was guilty and a damned liar about that manufactured typewriter story. Read the Hiss website’s response to the Venona proof. It just is not convincing.

Check also the timeline Hiss puts forth as to that typewriter balderdash. It is palpable nonsense and makes no sense whatever. Just ask Hiss, rhetorically, when was the FBI supposed to have manufactured this typewriter, before or after they knew the typewriter Hiss identified was missing or after? If it was after they discovered from Hiss that his wife’s typewriter was missing, then what were they have supposed to have done with the phony typewriter, fabricate the Pumpking Papers which were in the public record for months or years? If it was before, weren’t they taking a big chance, if Hiss had it in his basement?

No, Chambers was telling the truth and Hiss lied consistently and was rightly convicted of perjury.

Edmund Burke,
For more extensive information and details re. The Hiss Case, check the specific details on the web sites I indicated. In a book called ‘Camp X,’ the author David Stafford points out that the camp, a training ground for British MI6 and British Army intelligence and sabotage teams, had contacts in nearby Toronto ”who could in three days reproduce faultlessly the imprint of any typewriter on earth.” In fact, Hoover visited this camp on at least one occasion and no doubt was aware of their varied capabilities, although personally I doubt that it was FBI which forged the typewriter.

As to motive, if the prosecution against Hiss had failed in the end, the entire Second Red Scare would have collapsed because the Hiss Case was the ”lynch pin” of that political movement. In all likelihood, both Nixon and Hoover would have been laughing stocks — Nixon’s political career would have been ruined, HUAC’s credibility would have been seriously undercut, and the Republicans would have had no urgent issue for the 1948 and 1952 elections.

As for the Venona cable #1822, one of the several problems with that document is that Hiss indeed had gone to Mexico City with a group of State Department people, but Hiss had returned to Washington by March 5, that is, before the date indicated for contact with the ‘Russian official.’

Always missing too from the investigations re. espionage of this era are any references to State Department secretaries and clerks, many of whom had almost unrestricted access to classified documents. At one point, Chambers mentioned that he had several secretaries feeding him information and documents, yet no one has ever done an investigation as to who these people were. They are largely anonymous today, except for a very few, like Judith Coplon, and therein, I think, lies the real significance of her case.

N.B. The two sets of ‘evidence’ are often confused: the ‘Pumpkin Papers’ were the microfilmed documents that Chambers hid inside a pumpkin on his farm and consisted primarily of films of unclassified papers, some regarding the inflation of rubber rafts and how to repaint fire extinguishers. The government classified these films as ‘top secret’ for decades in order to keep the public from finding out what was really on them.

The typed papers were the socalled ‘Baltimore Documents,’ putatively typed on what the FBI knew was not the Hiss machine when it was presented in court. See the Hiss forensics experts’ comments on these papers at AlgerHiss.com.

Yes I rechecked the facts and it seems, correct me if I am wrong, that Chambers produced the Baltimore documents, retrieved from an dumbwaiter, before he produced the films in the pumpkin, which I have always but incorrectly jointly referred to as the Pumpkin papers. I also recall that Hiss’s original “forgery by typewriter” defense was that the typewriter that Schmahl for the defense located was the correct typewriter but it did not produce similar documents to those produced by Chambers which were made on the “manufactured” typewriter which the government never produced. Later I think the Hiss defense changed this story to argue the typewriter they originally produced and marked as the retrieved Hiss typewriter was not the right one and was a plant by Schmahl who jumped sides when it turned out to produce pretty accurate likenesses of the Baltimore papers. So my question still stands. When did Schmahl manufacture this phony typewriter, before or after Chambers produced the Baltimore papers? If it was after, it does not prove Chambers lied or that Hiss was innocent of espionage, only the government was playing unfair, to induce the Hiss defense into a fatal mistake, by inadvertently arguing, initially, that the Baltimore papers were typed on a different typewriter (namely Mrs. Hiss’s Woodstock) than Schmahl’s phony. A pretty funny fake out if it happened, but I still doubt it. Because it was possible doesn’t prove its true. I still don’t see anyone with sufficient foresight to start manufacturing a typewriter to assist Chambers in producing more proof of espionage, when he already had plenty of documents and films from 1938, and most people were against him to begin with since he too had changed his story in a number of ways. Too big a risk and no payoff. There were alot of easier ways to frame Hiss and the government had two or three witnesses already. More witnesses have arisen since. If Hiss was really just a total frame up, why did all these people go to the effort to confirm that he was a spy? I will never get it. If it is just the Coplon defense, sure I’m guilty but the government cheated so let me off anyway, it does not work for me because Hiss was not convicted of espionage but of perjury, and no one doubts he was guilty of that. A very interesting discussion though.

Well, I reviewed Witness, and the original “forgery by typewriter” motion filed post-conviction (second trial) by Hiss and the chronology renders that theory from the first post-trial motion impossible (but not the theory the Woodstock the defense ultimately found in April 1949 before the first trial was altered by the Gov’t before the defense found it). The reason the alterations could not have been done before the Baltimore doc’ts were produced on Nov. 17, 1948 by Chambers in the private libel suit (filed Nov. 4) is because just after the libel suit was filed, in early Nov., Chambers was subpoenaed to the NY Grand Jury investigating communism (six months into its term) and denied under oath that any espionage was involved (particularly with Hiss) and that he had no documents and never received any. He would not have said this if he knew the Gov’t then was involved in fabricating documents for him. If he was going to cooperate with them to frame Hiss, why would he then lock himself into a perjury charge with the exact opposite story?

And once he locked himself in like that, why would the Gov’t or FBI who Chambers claimed was not in contact with him then, after his HUAC testimony in Aug.-Sept. 1948, think they could use him as a conduit for forged papers, after he had just denied he had any? Chambers does not sound like a person who would have exposed himself to that perjury charge he sorely worried about by agreeing to do that after he so testified.

Remember now, Chambers produced the 65 Baltimore doct’s on Nov. 17, 1948 (which proved he lied under oath to protect Hiss) less than two weeks after he claimed not to have any documents. If they were not produced and collected in 1938 as Chambers claimed, when were they produced? Before he claimed he had none, or after? This ignores the reams of photographed material, random scoopings by Hiss and others, that he hid (as film) in the pumpkin and produced later (and not all of the Balt. doc’ts were typed. Some were photocopied and some handwritten in Hiss’s hand).

Beyond that is the problem of Chambers’ knowledge at that time. He knew, from his description of events in Witness, that Hiss had given him briefcases of documents and later had a few he could not turn over for photography typed at his home, but it does not seem likely that Chambers knew or remembered in Early Nov. 1948 who typed them at Hiss’s home, or on what machine. Seems he testified later that it was Priscilla Hiss on the Woodstock, but this perhaps could have come from the FBI who analyzed the documents and interviewed the Hiss’s after Nov. 17, 1948.

Lastly is this extract from Witness published in 1952 with no apparent knowledge at that time of the post-trial claim of “forgery by typewriter” which, like everything in the book, has the ring of truth which I have never had from Hiss:

“At the end of the week of Dec. 7 [1948] … The Grand Jury reported that it could not find an indictment against Hiss [after reviewing the Baltimore Doc’ts and hearing witnesses]. Hiss still cooly denied he gave me [these documents] . . .or that he had any knowledge of how they were typed. . . . His Woodstock typewriter on which they were copied was missing. [FN. It was not to make its appearance until early in the first Hiss (perjury) trial when [the Hiss] defense produced it with a flourish in court. The motives of the defense in producing it have seemed cryptic to some people. Actually, prosecutor Murphy left them no choice [by disclosing in his opening statement that the defense had the original typewriter] End of FN].”

Chambers continues in his main text: “The jury knew that the documents had been copied on a Woodstock. They had no evidence the documents had been copied on Hiss’s Woodstock [where earlier Hiss had lied to the FBI that he had sold it when in actual fact he gave it to his maid’s children]. . . .”

“Working under high pressure on that critical weekend [after Dec. 7, 1948] the FBI in Philadelphia uncovered specimens typed on [Hiss’s] Woodstock [created by Hiss’s wife and father in law]. The type face [on these specimens] was identical [to the typeface on the Baltimore documents].”

When presented with these documents in the Grand Jury hearing on Dec. 15, typed by his father in law and wife, and asked how it was the typeface on these exemplars was the same as on the Baltimore documents, before he had the leisure to fabricate, Hiss blurted out the truth lodged in his brain by saying [to great laughter]: “Until the day I die, I shall wonder how Whittaker Chambers got into my house to use my typewriter,” a clear admission he knew where the Balt. Doc’ts had been typed and on what machine.

Obviously you cannot manufacture a copy of a typewriter without an exemplar, and if the manufactured typewriter produced the few typed Baltimore Doc’ts, those could not have been the exemplar. Chambers confirms the FBI had no motive (or involvement in the private Baltimore lawsuit) to look for the exemplars until the Woodstock was identified after Nov. 17 and the issue arose of who was telling the truth about the doc’ts which was not until Dec. 1948, i.e. after Nov. 17. The FBI went to look for the exemplars in Dec. as much to prove that Chambers was the liar, as vice versa, since at that time the issue of who was lying was very much in doubt, with Pres. Truman, the Secy of State and part of the Supreme Court supporting Hiss as well as every liberal there was. (Just think of the liberal’s hatred of Palin and multiply it by 10 concerning the liberal Gov’ts attitude toward Chambers).

Later of course, the FBI, who was credited by HUAC and Nixon (Six Crises) with finding the Woodstock in 1949, could have first found and altered it (e.g. by putting the original typeface on a later, more workable body) and then bribe the truckman who allegedly had it into giving the phony to the defense attorneys. Mr. Schmal was not alleged to be involved in this in the first post-trial motion which suggested the truckman delayed giving it up until the defense attorneys appeared at his door who could be relied on to produce the [phony] evidence at trial. I still don’t see why the FBI would go to the risk. Makes more sense to produce the ruined unworkable specimen traced through the Maid’s children and show Hiss, charged with perjury, and his wife had both lied about its disposal. Case closed. Chambers was not involved in any “forgery by typewriter.” Period.

That Chambers was accurately reporting the facts re the first discovery of the exemplars in Dec. 1948 is contemporaneously born out by the Dec. 1948 news article linked at fn 34 in the Hiss article at Wikipedia which is labeled 34.^ “Sleuth “Hired by Hiss” Touched Off Hunt for Typewriter Here”. Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. 1948-12-14. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.hiss1111.0182.001. Retrieved 2010-07-12.

The Sleuth is not identified in the article, but the Wikipedia article claims the Sleuth was the CIC mole in the Hiss defense, hired in Oct., the military “spycatcher” Horace Schmahl who was encroaching on FBI jurisdiction without their consent (or knowledge?). The linked article of Dec. 14, 1948 from the Phila. paper, posted at Steven Salant’s Successful Strategic Deception site is reviewable here

It confirms that the search for exemplars did not start until mid December after it appeared the Grand Jury would not indict without more evidence. The day after the article the exemplars were presented to Hiss testifying before the Grand Jury, so the search must have started some time before the article was published. If Hiss knew he was guilty he would not have wanted Schmahl to go look for these papers (which might have been prompted by his attorneys only, who kept undermining him by believing he was innocent). But also Hiss would have been aware if these exemplars were searched for before Nov. 1948 by Schmahl or others, and he never claimed they were. He always said Chambers got and retained the exemplars from 1937, in which case Chambers would have given them to HUAC in 1938 to prove his bonafides, particularly if they were innocent.

Oddly, Wikipedia says Schmahl found the typewriter in 1949 for the defense. But other info I read said Schmahl quit the defense to become a secret FBI informant in Jan. 1949 and if you read this article from the Pro-Hiss Nation by Fred Cook, posted at the Pro-Hiss website

it gives a very detailed description from the defense of their finding of the typewriter in April 1949. While slanted entirely towards Hiss, the article never mentions Schmahl who did not seem to be involved at all and is never mentioned. Cook speculates the truckman wanted to give the typewriter only to the Hiss attorneys.

Oddly, if the body of the typewriter found was not the real typewriter, I am shocked that for the next ten months of litigation neither the Hisses nor the maid’s family nor the other owners of the real typewriter ever noticed the body of the typewriter they found was different, particularly if the forgers never had the real body to use while they were duplicating the type face. And if the forgery of the type face was from the documents (Balt. and exemplars) located in 1948, done in 1949, I have to ask why? At that point there was no real motive for such subterfuge.

Anyway, if anyone is able to fix Wikipedia about Schmahl’s involvement in finding the typewriter, it should be done because I believe it to be palpably false or at least unsupportable.

As a last bit of proof read Witness and note that the pumpkin film, not revealed or developed until after the Balt. doc’ts were exactly contemporary from early 1938 with the Balt. Documents which Hiss acknowledged were accurate summaries of State dep’t memos from that period. His big defense was Chambers claimed repeatedly to the US Gov’t through the war years that he left the Communist Party in 1937 when he was claiming the Hiss brothers were in a Communist cell with him. Hiss lied about selling the Woodstock in Dec. 1937. If before Chambers corrected his testimony to say he left the Party in April 1938 after Nov. 1, 1948, any forgery before that would have to be based on the belief that Chambers story of 1937 was correct and would have forged documents from the period Chambers and Hiss were living in the same house (or Chambers was living in Hiss’s house). No one claimed the films were forged after the photographers camera from the late ’30′s was found and matched the film fingerprint. Sooooo, prior to the alleged forgers of the Balt. doc’ts seeing the film or the accurate documents on Chambers film, which Chambers says was stored with the Balt. doc’ts, the forgers picked docts from a date after Chambers allegedly left the party which matched the photographed documents. How did they do that? The existence of the film just about makes the forgery by typewriter theory impossible.

Another thing. If you look at the materials here http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/typewr.html about the typewriter alteration claim, it is clear that after the children of the Hiss’s maid gave up the original Woodstock typewriter, it was seen or went through the hands of at least six living witnesses, most who seemed willing to help (the maid’s family) or speak to the Hiss investigators. Hiss’s attorney had the typewriter that the gov’t allegedly altered. Yet no witness signed an affidavit that the typewriter the truckman gave to Hiss’s attorneys was different or less beat up from the one they remembered from over the last eleven years. Where is the statement from one of these witnesses that the typewriter was not the same, either during the two trials or after? Very strange.

I just finished doing a research paper for college concerning Americans who spied for the Soviet Union before and during the Cold War. I was amazed to find that at least 90% of all these American traitors and spies were American Jews. Why??

Almost 100% of the “atomic spies” during World War-II were American Jews, as were the vast majority (but not all) of all Americans who spied for the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Again why ?? Of course there were other American Jews such as Dr. Teller and Dr. Feynman who were patriotic American Jews and never spied for the Soviets, but why were so many others convinced to do so? Another point I discovered was that virtually none of these American Jews spied for the Soviets for money, since all of them did it for ideological reasons. Did they really love Communism that much? and think the Soviet system was that much better than American Capitalism?

I do not intend this post to be racist, or anti-Semitic, I am just asking a valid question that I hope some American Jews can answer, so please don’t “flame” me for asking a valid historical question.

It is a fair question. One- I have a long column about this coming out soon in the Jewish online magazine, Tablet, so keep a look out for it. And secondly, the YIVO Institute in New York City is having a major conference on Jews and the Left on Sepember 20th, which will address this very issue. Hope you can come. Ron Radosh

Socolov says, “If you feel that what you’re doing answers to a higher ideal, it’s not treason.”

So the Nazi spies in France, England, and the United States, even if they were citizens of those counties, did not commit treason? They certainly believed that they were spying to bring about a higher ideal, didn’t they?